Creel to Copper Canyon and to Choix, Mex. 12/5 – 12/13/07

 It has been almost 6,000 miles and 188 days since we started!!!!!  WOW!!!!

We spent 3 days and 4 nights in Creel (the town at the top of Copper Canyon).  The first day we spent biking around trying to find the GRAND view of the canyon, like the one at the Grand Canyon.  Well, as we quickly found out this canyon consists of many tree-covered canyons and is so deep (6,000′) that you really can’t see to the bottom from 1 point.  While biking around we did see rock formations of frogs, mushrooms and monks.  All around these formations, living in caves, cliffs and mudhuts were hundreds of the Tarahumara Indians (a very primitive culture that dates back thousands of years!)  They dress in very colorful, all hand-sewn clothing and grow all their own food.  It feels like yoiu walked into a history book and were able to observe a culture stuck in the past.  They are all very small, dark-skinned and somber people.  The next couple days we had an enjoyable time meeting many other travelers.  We stayed at the Hotel Margarita which has a large community dining table (for $30 a night we got a room and 2 meals a day) where we met many interesting people and heard about their journeys!

From Creel we headed south and west towards the bottom of the canyon to Batopilas (which is 85 miles and 6,000′ lower).  The first day we went 50 miles and climbed a total of 5,000′ and dropped about 5,000′ (because you are climbing in and out of canyons) to the end of the pavement at Samachique.  When we arrived at dusk, a man offered us a place to put our tent next to his store/house.  The next morning we were greeted by 2 pigs and 2 dogs just outside our tent (they do not have fences for their animals, they just hang out!)  We proceeded now on a dirt/gravel road another 10-15 miles of dropping and climbing, and were starting to wonder when, if ever, we would be dropping the 6,000′ to the bottom of the canyon!!!!  Shortly after that we came to (the dreaded switchbacks for Pat), (the screaming downhill for Ralph)!!!  WOW –  WHAT A VIEW!!!!   We could see endless switchbacks below us as far as the eye could see.  It took us a very long time to descend because we had to stop at every turn and take a picture!!!  The terrain changed from pine forests, where we saw loggers using horses to pull the logs, to large cactus and scrubby trees, where we saw goats climbing trees out on a cliff to get leaves to eat!  We saw many goats and burros, and even some people living in the cliffs and caves along the way down to Batopilas!!! 

We spent a day in Batopilas and decided on our route to get out of the canyon,  south and west on roads we had found on our maps that would lead us along the river and valley floor (little did we know what really lied ahead) to the lowlands and eventually to Los Mochis on the Pacific Coast.

The day we left Batopilas we did ONLY ABOUT a 7,000′ climb and then we dropped again to a nice perched campsite with a stunning view of the river thousands of feet below us.  All day long we rode thru everchanging Grand Canyon-like scenery.  Whenever we would crest a ridge there would be another MONSTER Canyon!!! The vertical relief was unbelievable!!!  We were on 4 wheel drive roads the whole time but only making about 15 miles each day (horizontally)!

When we finally got down to the river we found out out the road followed the river downstream crisscrossing it 5 times.  We waded across, pushing our bikes one at a time in anywhere from ankle to thigh-deep water!  As we finally started to ascend back out of the canyon, we came to a gate and guard house.  It was the entrance to a big gold mine.  At this point we were pretty much out of food and were HUNGRY!!!  We asked the guard in our broken spanish if there was a resturant and/or a store up top.  He assured us there were both while he asked us to wait to get an escort to the top of the mine.  Our escort showed up about and hour later and we loaded the bikes in the back of his pickup because they wouldn’t allow us to ride thru the mine.  They transported us several thousand vertical feet through the mine to the top entrance gate, where another guard greeted us and handed us 2 large meals they had prepared for us to go, with no charge!!!  (Just when we think we are not going to survive, someone comes thru and really surprises us in this country!)  Upon leaving the mine we pedaled around the next corner and quickly ate our lunch of French Fries, Cuesadias and Guacamole, then countinued on the steep switchbacking road down to a river, then back up to another nice perch to camp just in time for nightfall.

The next day we got caught in a hugh rainstorm and were having a hard time crossing the rivers since they were rising so fast.  Someone came to our rescue once again and loaded our bikes in the back of their pickup, took us across the stream,  down a very muddy road for 5 miles and found us a shelter to set our tent under until the rain stopped!!  It continued to rain harder and steady all day long!!  The next day was beautifully sunny and muddy!!  We were served a hugh Mexican-style breakfast by the restaurant next door and were able to bike along the road, which luckily the road grader had just bladed!!  The day consisted of more stream crossings (which at one point a guy in a large truck was able to hold Ralph’s 100 pound bike in one hand and drive the truck across – yes you read it right – a 100 lb bike in one hand and the controls to a transport truck in the other hand, crossing a rocky arroyo with 2 ft deep water.  Kids, dont try this at home, especially with Dads bike!!!)), a few more really steep climbs and descents and needless to say, 2 very tired bikers!!  We finally arrived in Choix by about 4 PM on 12-13, Wednesday and found a very nice hotel and are here enjoying the comforts of sleeping in a bed again and tasting the great food at the tacorillas!! 

 The magnitude of this part of our trip was hard for us to first grasp, so we are not sure you will be able to grasp it even with the aid of our photos which we soon hope to have on our website.  Before our initial descent into the canyon, we stood in total awe at both the vertical releif and the road into it (that by the way looked like something a lunatic and a D9 bulldozer would create!!!!).  Then, after our first huge climb out of Batopilas, it really hit us that this was the real deal – we had just biked the vertical equivalent of the Grand Canyon (without getting busted!!!!!!) in one ascent!!!! Be it known that Ralph has biked his fair share of vertical, but nothing of this intensity!!  Then, like all good bikers should, we did it at least 2 more times over the next few days!!  Its totally mind-boggling to look down between your shoes at cliffs edge and see the river over 5000 ft below you and realize you just climbed that!!!!´

Ralph has to insert a footnote here.  While in Creel trying to plan our next move, we had an argument.  I wanted to bike the incredible vertical of Copper Canyon, while Pat was much more sensible and said she was thru with this insane trip.  The next morning we woke up and she said one of the most romantic things ever (you probably have to be a crazed biker lunatic guy to think this), she said “I will follow you to the end of the earth!!”  (I hope Tierra del Fuego will do!)  I know Pats friends are reading this and rolling their eyes, but it sure was special to me!!!

All along this great adventure, people, and especially Mexicans have renewed our faith in what human kindness is, they have been most generous in offering us places to camp, great food and even have offered for us to stay in their own houses.  We don’t know if they are really generous or if they want bragging rights in their village about the “2 CRAZY AMERICANOS” that stopped at their place!!  They mostly look at us and stare or laugh when we tell them what we are doing and all the people come running out of their houses to watch us ride by like we came from a different planet!!!

Until next time!!     Bikin’ On, Ralph & Pat

Jovales, Mexico to Creel (11/25/07 to 12/04/07)

We finally left Jovales after lots of snow, lots of kindness and lots of good food! 

We headed south on dirt (mud) roads thru the forested mountains, camped under a big ponderosa on dry ground, surrounded by the white stuff, on into El Largo, a lumbermill shanty town, and on to Cuarenta Casas, thru small, unbelievably beautiful canyons and a river valley with big gray and green rock outcrops.  Cuarenta Casas (40 Houses), is a grouping of cliff dwellings similar to Mesa Verde in Colorado.  We got there too late in the day to take the 1 hour/1 way hike to the ruins, so only viewed them from the overlook.  We camped the night at a campground near there (a patch of grass in the trees behind the caretaker’s cabin).  Him and his brother built us a campfire, made us coffee, offered Ralph a shot of smooooth tequila and talked (kinda, they knew a little more English than we knew Spanish), with us into the evening.  His favorite saying was “Yessir, Professir” and he was quite a funny character. 

The next day we made it to Madera and stayed 2 nights at a great motel, ate at great restaurants and met a wonderful English speaking couple (Jill and Mark) from Happy Valley, Arizona.  Heading south from Madera, we rode thru shallow mountain valleys full of corn and hay fields, thru several small towns and stayed the night at “Hotel California” (I’m not making this stuff up!!!) a dive of a place for $12 per night, painted bright pink.  They had a captive audience tho being the only hotel within 30 miles! 

The next day we passed thru Guerrero, a pretty little town, then on south thru the rain to a pretty little canyon where we met Ramon’, who invited us to camp on his picturesque property, with a stream running thru tall rock cliffs (that, by the way, he tried to sell a chunk of to us for $3000!)  We pitched our tent in a half finished house with a dirt floor and no door, because it was still sprinkling.  It rained a bunch during the night and the wind blew with hurricane force all night long!  Even tho the dust blew around in the house shell, and the metal roof was loose and banged all night, it was waaay better than camping in the open.  I don’t know if the tent would have survived! 

We biked to Creel the next day with a stiff headwind, which was no fun at all because it’s also way up hill!  Creel is at the head (top) of Copper Canyon and is full of people travelling here from all over the world on their own adventures!  Last night, 2 other bikers arrived at our hotel, Christian and Takuto, who are also biking from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego!  We are here catching up on email, doing fun stuff with other travellers (yesterday, a hotsprings adventure with Dana, Jeff, Sally and Marty was great) and checking out the area. 

Our friend, Brad, emailed us and mentioned we’re doing a Lewis and Clark type adventure.  Like I later told him – sometimes we feel like Lewis and Clark, but lately we feel more like “Curly and Larry”, with our self-inflicted Spanish language immersion course! 

We are currently trying to figure out the next let of our journey which we hope to embark on tomorrow.  We plan to drop into Copper Canyon, a canyon much larger and deeper then the Grand Canyon, then take a hiking trail along the bottom, then bike up and out the other side.  Folks at the motel are calling us “crazy”, (not the first time), and although I didn’t write the book on crazy – only a chapter or two – we plan to do it! (Ralph wrote this part! Pat may have another plan, so we’ll keep you posted!).

Bikin’ On to the bottom!  Ralph & Pat   

Columbus, NM to Jovales, Mexico 11/18/07 to 11/24/07

After a pancake breakfast, lots of coffee, conversing with many great folks interested in our trip and a delivery from a generous neighbor of breakfast burritos, we were finally off to the border!!!  At the border we got our tourist cards then pedalled south and west to the town of Ascencion.  It was a Sunday evening when we arrived, so the tradition in Mexico is to drive up and down main steet late into the night for anyone that owns a car that even remotely runs.  This town, which is typical of most small Mexico towns has only dirt streets, so you can imagine the dust!!!  We were glad to find a motel and take good hot showers after a long day through mostly uninteresting, hot, dry desert terrain.

The next day was more miles of hot, dry desert and a gradual climb, past COTTON PICKIN’ RANCHES and chili farms to Nuevo Casas Grandes,( means new town of large houses).  We stayed there overnight and the next day went to the original town of Casas Grandes, only 3 miles away. 

No sooner had we stopped at the plaza, when an American man walked over and told us his name was Spencer and he was the self appointed town “Chamber of Commerce”.  He asked us what we needed to know and gave us a tour of the town and his home. Then a brief history lesson of the area and a tour of several of his restored adobe homes, in which he had left  the original antiques, which were incredibly beautiful!  He rents them to groups or people that want to come study the rich culture in this area or study art.  He found us a place to stay and recommended a tour of the Paquime’ Museum and ruins.  This town is surrounded by small 6,000 to 9,000 foot mountain ranges and sits in a valley where the Paquime culture existed in the 1000 to 1400’s.  They built large adobe dwelling, hence the name, which were destroyed in the 1400’s.  The plaza in Casas Grandes is beautiful and the town has paved streets and is clean and very pretty!!  Highly recommended if you are traveling thru here.

From Casas Grandes we ventured southwest to the town of Mata Ortiz, a town famous for the pottery of Juan Quezada.  Thanks to Spencer, who single handedly discovered and promoted him!  Now the town has over 600 potters and artists.  Before Spencer found this potter, the art of this type of pottery making was about to become lost forever!!   Mata Ortiz pottery is characteristically very thin walled 1/8 inch, intricately decorated, very symmetrically and often times decorated in the ancient Paquime’ style.

We stayed at the Adobe Inn, where we met a group of pottery seekers from the U.S.  that were here on a tour/vacation.  They invited us along on their tours over the next 2 days and we had Thanksgiving dinner served by the staff of the Inn.  Dave brought along a “plastic Turkey” and tableclothes for the occasion and 15 of us sat at the table waiting for TURKEY DINNER!!!!?!?!   Thanksgiving dinner was served and consisted of spaghetti noodles with tomato paste on top, stir*fry hamburger and Chili Rellenos (which was the good part)!  We did have pumpkin and apple pie for dessert tho (thanks to Sara and Peter who brought them from the U.S.).  So it did feel sorta like Thanksgiving day, with  a large family to share the day with, a wine toast to safe travels and a live Turkey that gobbled and fluffed his feathers for us earlier in the day!  We would like to thank Dave, Carolyn and everyone with them for the wonderful experience and for letting us tag along to view and learn about Mata Ortiz pottery (we really enjoyed getting to know everyone and hope to meet again someday at another one of your pottery gatherings or maybe a solar eclipse viewing)!

We enjoyed ourselves so much and met such great people, that we had a hard time prying ourselves away from the area.  So, the day after Thanksgiving, bucking a strong head wind that kept blowing clouds of dust at us, we made our way along rough dirt roads up into the mountains and headed south.  When we got into the forested area, we were able to dodge logging trucks, chase wild turkeys, see log cabins (we had been told of log cabins in the mountains of Mexico, but didn’t beleive it until we came across the first one!) and encountered wonderfully friendly local people.  (We’re working on our Spanish, so there’s lots of pantomining, but most people are very patient and helpful!) 

We dropped down into the tiny village of Jovales late in the day, which was about 25 miles into the mountains on little dirt roads, and there was (to our amazement) 2 huge log cabins, sitting right in the middle of this little tiny village, built by the Mexican government for the women of the town to rent out for an income! The cabins were nicer than any of the homes in the village and about 4 times their size.  We felt very privledged to be offered to say in one, being some of the first people to rent them in the 2 years since they were built. (At this point,  there was a huge black cloud coming, temperature was dropping fast and the wind was so strong you could hardly stand up!)

Well, as you probably figured and the way our luck has been on this trip, we had torrential rains all night long, which by the next morning quickly turned to SNOW !!!!!  We decided to stay put, which was a good decision because by the end of the day it was about 4″ deep.    We decided to sit by the wood stove and work on our Spanish for the day.  All day long townspeople kept coming by, making sure we were not ”Frio” (cold),  brought us coffee, tortillas, burritos, pudding, cookies, bisquits and lots of firewood!  We communicated with them as much as we could in our very broken Spanish and had a great time!  Thank you to all the generous, warm, friendly people in the tiny village of Jovales, we will never forget your kindness!

Hopefully the weather will clear tomorrow so we can head toward Cuarenta (40) Casas (houses) cliff dwellings south of here!

Adios Amigos!!!!  Ralph ^ Pat